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(LifeSiteNews) — A BBC correspondent experienced a swift backlash after he published a photo of his same-sex partner holding their surrogate’s baby, whom he described as “beautiful hand luggage.”

“After 6 weeks in wonderful [Canada] and tearful farewells to our incredible surrogate & friend, it’s time to go home to Lisbon with our new family member: our most beautiful hand luggage,” tweeted Mark Lowen. Included in his Twitter post was a photo of his partner, Pedro Penim.

One of Penim’s Instagram posts describes Lowen as his “husband” and celebrated their fourth anniversary of their “marriage.”

Lowen and Penim apparently obtained their new baby in Canada, which the former described as “a shining light of democracy & equality. Thank you for letting us fulfil our dream.”

The tweet earned Lowen plenty of criticism from people deriding their objectification of the child.

“A baby is not ‘hand luggage,’” tweeted Live Action CEO Lila Rose. “Not an accessory. Not property. A child is a human being with rights. Children don’t exist for the sake of an adult ‘dream.’ This baby also deserves a mom—biological or adopted. Creating her only to intentionally deprive her is morally wrong & cruel.”

Katy Faust, founder of the children’s rights organization Them Before Us, noted Lowen’s phrasing and criticized him for separating the baby girl from her natural family. She was responding to a tweet in which Lowen posted a video of two siblings reuniting.

“The irony of a man who intentionally separated his daughter from her mother via egg ‘donor’ and surrogacy sharing this tearful video of reunited twins separated from birth… YOU have inflicted this *exact loss* on your baby,” tweeted Faust. “She will also long for the mother you deprived her of.”

Conservative commentator Allie Beth Stuckey described surrogacy as “sick and selfish.” And Fr. Matthew Schneider said: “There are good reasons you can’t do this in Portugal & had to go across the world: surrogate parenting (rent-a-womb) is demeaning to women. I’m ashamed my home country [Canada] allows this exploitative practice.”

READ: First Lady of Ukraine hypocritically condemns Russians for adopting orphans but ignores her own country’s surrogacy laws

But Lowen also received accolades.  “Amazing congrats you both!” tweeted CBS News correspondent Ramy Inocencio. A senior BBC producer similarly congratulated the duo.

Some Twitter users defended Lowen. One responded to Stuckey by saying: “So a gay couple decided to do surrogacy and bring a life into the world and you’re upset about that? Pro-life until the parents are gay, I guess.”

“It’s not ‘pro-life’ to create a person with the intention of taking her away from her mother by buying eggs and renting a womb, but good try,” Stuckey shot back.

According to his Twitter profile,  Mark Lowen is the BBC Rome correspondent, covering Southern Europe.  He has recently  commented on Vatican news, apparently perturbed that Pope Francis has supported homosexuality beyond calling for the decriminalization of homosexual acts. In a response to an Associate Press tweet reporting that Pope Francis “calls laws criminalizing homosexuality ‘unjust’ and asserts: ‘Homosexuality is not a crime.’ The pontiff says God loves all his children just as they are,” Lowen responded, “…but goes on to call it a ‘sin’.”

The controversy over Lowen’s baby tweet was just the latest uproar over comments by same-sex partners regarding the children they obtain via surrogacy. Typically derided as “womb renting,” the practice usually involves finding an egg donor as well as a woman to carry the child. Right-leaning commentator Dave Rubin notably likened the process of finding an egg donor to using the hook-up app Tindr.

READ: Matt Walsh challenges Joe Rogan on same-sex ‘marriage’ and surrogacy: ‘Mom is not expendable’

Last summer, a video emerged showing a same-sex couple describing the attributes they sought while choosing an egg donor. “So, we wanted her to have lovely big eyes,” one of the men says while holding the baby. “I wanted her to have really thick hair because I’ve had two hair transplants. I wanted her to have a really wide nice smile and to look like a kind person.” The other man interjected: “Yeah, and we wanted her to be creative because we love the arts.”

The BBC did not immediately respond to LifeSite’s request for comment.

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